This summer sees them touring Europe and the UK to perform at numerous festivals including Rockness, Scotland and Pohoda, Slovakia.
Working on their production, lighting designer David Cohen of Sauce Design created an inspired structure using 181 Barco 340mm MiStrip LED lights. Cohen arranged the MiStrips in eleven rows of four and five hexagons, fashioning a 'honeycomb' shaped LED rig that allows him to create an ingenious mix of shapes and sequences when running content over them.
As the MiStrips are VideoMapped hundreds of times and divided onto individual controllers on his lighting console, Cohen is able to run content either over the entire set-up or over selected strips or areas of the structure only. Essentially he is using the VideoMapper feature to create DMX controllable masks.
Cohen uses Artnet to connect his lighting console to the HippoCritter and the Hippotizer's embedded HippoNet network to control the HippoCritter from his MacBook Pro. All commands and signal are then sent via a Barco D320 image processing unit before reaching the MiStrip tubes. Using a MidiSport I/O box from one of the HippoCritter's USB ports the Hippotizer is connected to the backline.
(Jim Evans)
